[spectre] book review / Stelarc

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Book review:

S T E L A R C
Political Prosthesis & Knowledge of the Body

Edited by Marina Grzinic


Although the art and the phenomenon of Stelarc is presented in many
books wich are dealing with new media technologies, Internet and virtual
environment, it is very unusual and important fact that this book, a
sort of a monograph, is first of this kind in the world, published by MKC,
Maribor (International Festival of Computer Arts) and Maska
Publications, Ljubljana. 

This book gives a thorough, chronological overview of the major projects
by Stelarc, their esthetical and contextual points, presented and
analysed by author himself. Theoretical and critical bases of his work,
relation of the human body and technologies, its history and future are
featured in essays of Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, Timothy Murray and
Marina Grzinic, supported with a large number of visual materials.  

Interpretation of some of the main strategies of Stelarc's engagement
and investment in dealing with new media art gives some precise
directions in revealing theoretical and philosophical discourses of his
work, questioning different levels of this complex issue - the issue of
contextualisation of a symbiosis between high technology and the human
body. Augmented, invaded body; Technology attached, inserted to the
body; Involuntary body - Net connectivity and remote agents;
Introduction to the post - biological body; Body extended into a
robotics entity; Cyborgs; Zombies; Prosthesis; Relation between virtual
and material; Phantom body; Deleted distinction between public and
private, psychological spaces.

The idea of this book is to bring together diverse levels of
interpretation in this sort of an artistic work, from which are created and
defined innovative approaches to understand the human body "no
longer as a site for the psyche or the social, but rather as a structure
to be monitored and modified - the body not as a subject but as an
object - not an object of desire but an object for redesigning"
(Stelarc)


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